Gledwoods deutscher Blog

DIARY OF A SLOWLY RECOVERING HEROIN ADDICT

I used to take heroin at every opportunity, for over 10 years, now I just take methadone which supposedly "stabilizes" me though I feel more destabilized than ever before despite having been relatively well behaved since late November/early December 2010... and VERY ANGRY about this when I let it get to me so I try not to.

I was told by a mental health nurse that my heroin addiction was "self medication" for a mood disorder that has recently become severe enough to cause psychotic episodes. As well as methadone I take antipsychotics daily. Despite my problems I consider myself a very sane person. My priority is to attain stability. I go to Narcotics Anonymous because I "want what they have" ~ Serenity.

My old blog used to say "candid confessions of a heroin and crack cocaine addict" how come that one comes up when I google "heroin blog" and not this one. THIS IS MY BLOG. I don't flatter myself that every reader knows everything about me and follows closely every single word every day which is why I repeat myself. Most of that is for your benefit not mine.

This is my own private diary, my journal. It is aimed at impressing no-one. It is kept for my own benefit to show where I have been and hopefully to put off somebody somewhere from ever getting into the awful mess I did and still cannot crawl out of. Despite no drugs. I still drink, I'm currently working on reducing my alcohol intake to zero.

If you have something to say you are welcome to comment. Frankness I can handle. Timewasters should try their own suggestions on themselves before wasting time thinking of ME.

PS After years of waxing and waning "mental" symptoms that made me think I had depression and possibly mild bipolar I now have found out I'm schizoaffective. My mood has been constantly "cycling" since December 2010. Mostly towards mania (an excited non-druggy "high"). For me, schizoaffective means bipolar with (sometimes severe) mania and flashes of depression (occasionally severe) with bits of schizophrenia chucked on top. You could see it as bipolar manic-depression with sparkly knobs on ... I'm on antipsychotic pills but currently no mood stabilizer. I quite enjoy being a bit manic it gives the feelings of confidence and excitement people say they use cocaine for. But this is natural and it's free, so I don't see my "illness" as a downer. It does, however, make life exceedingly hard to engage with...

PPS The "elevated mood" is long gone. Now I'm depressed. Forget any ideas of "happiness" I have given up heroin and want OFF methadone as quick as humanly possible. I'm fed up of being a drug addict. Sick to death of it. I wanna be CLEAN!!!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

ALL SCANDAL has broken loose by my "daring" to walk out of an antidrugs seminar yesterday afternoon!

The officiators told Maple, my personal worker, that I seemed very depressed. And usually one to share so much saying so little. And then pinging out the door...

It is all made worse by my loudly complaining about mental health nondiagnostics from non-services that have been a total non-help when my life was in smithereens...

And as if just babbling can heal anything..?!?!

This is what gets me about the modern world. The idea that "therapy" (and presumably healing) can only be achieved by spewing rubbish through the mouth: even when one has nothing to share.

Maple said "hear hear" to that one, for she disagrees with the compulsoriness of public sharing in "psychological" contexts (e.g. anti-drugs workers' "we are superior professionals so let's stick together like a professional cabal" forum meetings) as well.

When I first came to my groups I made the mistake of assuming that most folks there would be from the same manner of past as me: decade or more long history of using; tried everything; needles; heroin addict and crack... Life swooshed totally down the lavatory pan. No! Some attendees, apart from regular toking on da 'erb have been messing around with crack for a few months and now wish to extricate from said problem. Nothing at all wrong with such determined, swift action. But it does rather clam me up from talk of overdosing, dead friends, dirty needles, life on the streets, begging, squats and so on.

Plus my fellow group attendees, not being "trusted" professionals, have signed nothing promising not to hear a juicy tale and go blabbing all around the area!

Of course I have not given up on giving up. If I had I'd not have thought to post anything like yesterday's lamentation. I'd simply have reverted (I suppose) to talk of syrupy brown gear dripping like honey from the spike-end of my junkie's poison darts... And so on...

Do you like my white tiger under water? They do love their daily swim...

*******

MICHAEL JACKSON: WILL THE speculations never end?

Not until quite a few multimillion-dollar juicy "all-exposing" bookdeals have been struck, I should suppose...

Today's allegations suggest Mr Jackson might not be biological father to any of those three curiously white children after all...

HERE'S A VIDEO I was watching the other day... found myself thinking: "Michael Jackson's with a black woman!" ("Supermodel" Naomi Campbell.) And not even realizing, till this short film "KEEP IT IN THE CLOSET" (allegedly co-voiced by Madonna, though I don't believe that) was nearly over [that he of course was black too!]...

[~ and the words in square brackets are those I missed out yesterday. DUR!!]

Monday, June 29, 2009

I am very annoyed with "Maple Syrup", my drugs "worker" for nagging at me to go daily antidrug seminars. It's not that EVERY single day there's one she thinks I ought to attend. But two or three times a week there are "relevant" ones on. And she appears to assume I'm doing nothing better so I HAVE to go.

I don't see why I should make excuses for being busy in my OWN LIFE. So I never explain to her why I miss them. Often the reason is I was doing something essential e.g. signing residency documents for where I live now at the council.

I am learning two foreign languages and those alone have me exhausted. Ploughing through that German novel, dictionary in hand, I think: just two more pages. Two more means one more hour. And yet I have to do it. My comprehension has risen from about 90% to over 95% so I know I'm doing something right. Spanish I play on the CDs round and round and yell out the answers: Una cocha para diez dias por favor! et cetera! And Spherical, who I try to address in Spanish thinks I have gone even crazier than before and squeals back to me in her chipmunk tones: ¡Déjame en paz! What do you think that means?

I am also permanently exhausted half the time. This being a medically diagnosed problem they call Chronic Fatigue Syndrome crossed with depression (you see, nobody knows what anything REALLY is... I have symptoms of something like hepatitis C or Lyme disease... though my last hep C test came out totally negative. And I also got tested for other bloodbourne viruses: Hep A, hep B, HIV and syphillis. All negative (thank God).

And of course my crash-course in sobriety (so to speak) has crashed into a wall. And I'm still using. Just a little less obsessively than before. And (somehow) eyeing that goal of CLEAN AND SOBER a little more closely. It seems a little more achievable, despite my having failed yet again to get there.

Am I any nearer? Am I better equipped to reach that sought-after "place"? Am I simply bouncily turgid because more full of bull**** than ever before?

THE SECOND INQUEST on Michael Jackson's body demanded by his family has been done and the corpse returned to the morgue.

The family evidently wanted to squash the wild "drugs" rumours flying around and so insisted on the independently executed tests, as is their legal right to do so.

But the body has already been returned ~ and the family are quiet. Leading one to suspect these findings match the (as yet unpublicized) results of the first.

Which leads me to suspect drugs still are at the centre of the ongoing investigation into the death of a star who was allegedly "covered in needle marks" (Sun newspaper) and under care of a heart physician so incompetent he had to be reminded by an emergency operator that chest compressions must be performed against a hard surface such as a floor, not a springy one like a bed.

Whether or not a criminal investigation is ongoing into Mr Jackson's death remains to be revealed. Today's press are claiming that if the state of California doesn't pursue one, the family will intervene and possibly force a private prosecution of their own.

Was he really taking DEMEROL (pethidine) shots? (Demerol/pethidine is basically the next thing down from injected morphine.) Was he doctor-shopping for what the American press dub "hillbilly heroin" ~ the strong opioid OXYCODONE?

Former publicist Stuart Backerman claimed Michael Jackson may have had a painkiller habit ever since being burned filming a Pepsi Cola commercial in 1984. An accident that left him with (2nd and 3rd degree) burns so bad he had to wear a hairpiece ever since.

Time will tell and one thing's for sure: this is just the start of the speculation.

In death as in life: a megastar still shrouded in mystery and questions....

Saturday, June 27, 2009

YESTERDAY I said I suspected drugs were involved in the death of pop superstar Michael Jackson and that's what the world's media are saying today. One report at TMZ suggested an empty DEMEROL (that's pethidine in Europe) syringe-works was lying next to his corpse when paramedics (who had some difficulty gaining entry to his rented home) arrived. Bearing in mind Mr Jackson's personal physician was there ~ what was stopping him throwing the doors open before they arrived? Why the big delay?

Los Angeles Police have their suspicions and swiftly impounded his car before any evidence he possibly stashed there could be disposed of...

Self-help "guru" Deepak Chopra, who is also a qualified medical doctor, states that Michael Jackson approached him in 2005 asking to be prescribed the infamous OXYCODONE. Dubbed "hillbilly heroin" this legally prescribed (though probably overprescribed and frequently "diverted" (ie sold on the black market) opioid painkiller comes as prolonged-release tablets that addicts crush and snort up the nose for a more powerful opiate effect, or more dangerously inject intravenously.

Dr Chopra alleges that Michael Jackson was doing the rounds of several doctors for oxycodone and various other strong painkillers. "But isn't that illegal?" asked the presenter on BBC Breakfast this morning. "Yes but it's commonly known that these doctors circle vulnerable Hollywood celebrities like vultures," stated Dr Chopra. "And it's high time these criminals were brought to justice."

Worldwide donkeys are used as beasts of burden and are often shockingly mistreated. This was the least shocking illustration I could find:

Sometimes they get into comedy scrapes at work:

WHEN I used to clean out my roborovski hamsters and, not too happy with the clean new livingspace they "trotted round and round like a donkey derby". In case they don't have these in your part of the world, it's either a donkey race for kiddies:

Or (more sedately) simply donkey rides on the beach:

Unlike human babies, who are born practically helpless, donkey foals are usually on their feet from the minute of birth. Newly born they're no bigger than a human baby...

... aaah!

Have a cheery weekend y'all!

NON-DONKEY-RELATED VIDEOJOHN SHUTTLEWORTH INVESTIGATES... is a classic radio programme. The best example being when he went Ghost Hunting with Most Haunted presenter Yvette Fielding. All the voices he does himself. Here he is advertising Yorkshire Tea ("like tea used to be," they always said):

Friday, June 26, 2009

PARAMEDICS apparently found him "in a coma" and "not breathing" (sounds like dead already to me) at his rented Bel Air mansion. He was pronounced dead from "cardiac arrest" soon after arrival at the UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles.

All this despite just having been pronounced fit to undergo a 50-show residency at the O2 Centre here in London.

He had proclaimed: "This is it" ~ that after this he would perform no more ~ words that proved sadly prophetic, although at the time they were interpreted as a sad attempt to fuel ticket sales.

Cause of death? My first reaction: I bet it was drugs.

Well wouldn't I say that? Just bear in mind this is a man who's had (and owned up to) inpatient treatment for "prescription" painkiller addiction several times in the past 15 years ~ a fact totally overshadowed by the wilder controversies that swirled around him up until the end.

The man was an addict! Just like I am. He popped pills; I used needles. The place you end up in is just the same. Opiates become the only thing that make life seem worth living.

Tomorrow's autopsy should shed some light on this sad situation. A full toxicology report isn't expected for several days.

All that talent, all that fame ~ and all those millions he frittered away. And none of it, as the old cliché goes, seemed to bring very much happiness to a man who "had it all".

Goodnight MichaelPeace at lastMichael Jackson 1958-2009

*******

HIStory Vol I was a 2-disc collection. Greatest hits on one; the best set of new songs of his mature career on the other. STRANGER IN MOSCOW

BILLIE JEAN, Motown 25thHis most famous performance; his first public moonwalk:

Michael Jackson was renowned for his "groundbreaking videos". Perhaps this one characterizes his crazy life better than any other.LEAVE ME ALONE

Thursday, June 25, 2009

THIS MORNING I copied my Mother, who does the washing up listening to The Archers, a soap opera featuring a village divided by class: posh country people and the yokel turnips. Except I was HABLAR-ing away en español at the top of my voice as the dishes (eventually) got cleaner. Some of those stubborn stains were so hard to shift we'd got from hiring a car to calling the emergency plumber by the time they had gone!

The depression I was moaning on about last week finally went ~ as you may have noticed by my daily mentions of Spanish vacaciones (or whatever they're called), rainbow donkies etc. And along with it my ridiculously extended sleep pattern. I'm now back to sleeping 7 or 8 hours.

Last night ITV showed the 2nd of 2 parts of Paradise Lost the TV prog on the nightmare facing an estimated million Brits in Spain alone as the credit crunch plus flagging pound hits the costas.

You hear all about a place called "Benidorm" and I always wondered why I've never met a single person who's been there. The mystery came a little clearer last night with a couple who bought a bar called The Rusty Nail. Takings were so poor, on a bad day they might make 3 euros! Soon as the narator mentioned "Benidorm" I thought I bet they're Northern ~ and sure enough they were. For some reason that particular area, which is just south of Barcelona, attracts holiday makers from Birmingham up (or to put in American-friendly terms, Brits who speak "with an accent").

One particular couple ~ I wanted to scream it at the television set ~ you could see exactly why their bar attracted nobody. 1. as they admitted they hadn't a word of the local lingo and so were utterly unable to serve locals, even though locals came in 2. the very plainness of the place was unbelievable. TART IT UP! I wanted to yell. Even if that means festooning the bar with sombrero-sporting donkey souvenirs (which must always be on sale ~ merchandising is the key!!). Anything! However tacky. But not just bare walls, bare bar: bare bare bare!

And that was another thing: EVERY single Brit interviewed was laughing or even half-PROUD about barely speaking a word of Spanish, which is one of the EASIEST languages to learn. Far easier than French, which can take an age to learn how to read aloud (so many silent letters). Plus the "gender" of nouns ~ masculine or feminine ~ is almost always immediately apparent in Spanish; that's why you say los maños and las palmas. In French, whether a word is male or female is often purely a matter of memory-work. I don't know. I just don't understand how you can splosh out £350,000 or more on a house and yet resent paying £50 on a few books and CDs!

Apart from Barcelona, the bit I would naturally gravitate to would be the Costa del Sol. This is the most easterly mooring point for yachts and cruisers of the Mediterranean and so attracts super-rich as well as more ordinary citizens. Not surprisingly the credit crunch isn't biting quite as hard here. They featured an East European lady who employs nearly 130 staff selling high-end properties, some in the multi-millions of Euros. I carefully took down her name. I actually dream at night of wandering the corridors of palatial mansions. I love architecture. If I were rich I would collect homes (nothing as vulgar as cars). So the idea of being an estate agent or "realtor" (as they don't call them here or in Spain) still appeals. Though they do have a shockingly bad reputation.

So you see my Spanish dream is still alive. I'm sure that where you have a million Brits seemingly drowning ~ for want of an interpreter as much as anything else ~ there must be a living to be made SOMEWHERE... Plus, incidentally after British the most common nationality living in Spain is GERMAN ~ so you see where this sudden language-study is going...

RENEE AND RENATO: SAVE YOUR LOVEA huge hit, Christmas 1982Yeah yeah I know this is all "Italiano" but it's all white buildings and old ladies drest in black... PS one Brit I do know who is mistress of the Italian language is Welshcakes Limoncello ~ à la Sicily Scene blog ...Renee's "Pavarotti light" style voice was a huge hit. In my opinion he's far better than Paul Potts:

JUST ONE CORNETTO ~ CLASSIC TV COMMERCIAL ~ SUNG BY RENATOCornetto was at the time the most premium quality ice-cream available from ordinary shops. The tune is "O Sole Mio". This, featuring a Cornetto-snatching singer (voiced by "Renato") is one of the most classic British telly ads of the early 1980s:

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

THESE are pretty much the only three "Spanish" songs I know. Apart from "la Bamba" which just annoys me:

UNA PALOMA BLANCA una paloma is a pigeon. Which means Paloma Picasso is called Pigeon Picasso. So una paloma blanca, of course, is a dove. This topped charts around Europe in 1975:

JEANETTE: PORQUE TE VASJeanette is a musician with a genuine cult following. Described as "the eternal 16-year-old" after the sound of her voice, this was her biggest hit in 1976, from the film Cria Cuervos, which means "Cry of the Crows".

Silvia Y: Viva Espana!Classic "we're going to Costa Blanca!" song from 1974, a time when Spain was still considered exotic:

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

YESTERDAY I RAN to the library with a pocket full of pound coins ~ because they CHARGE for language courses ~ and got out two from-scratch ones in Spanish. I was looking for one that would take me as far as possible and foolishly picked an outsized Berlitz 4-CD one with outsized blown-plastic moulding and two flimsy books that could be reprinted on the amount of paper that would fit in a cigarette packet. In other words hardly anything is explained properly. The other, a CD-only Teach Yourself Spanish Conversation is excellent as you never have to refer to any booklet (in fact I think there was one, but it is no more and the man at the desk, who looked like he yodelled in lederhosen in his spare hand, was far more indignant than I, who would suffer more from its loss.

Frustrated by the lack of grammatical explanation in Berlitz, I've now changed it for Routledge Colloquial ~ only 2 CDs but a nice fat explanatory textbook (I'm such a swot). Incidentally these loans cost £2 a time ~ now isn't that taking the peepee? On the other hand it's good because it keeps them on the shelves for people who actually want to use them, which is something, I suppose...

My Mum got me a bargain-basement CD-player (called a Tesco Value Boombox ~ that wording alone is classic). I had been saving the moment of unwrapping until I had something new to play on it. O man! I couldn't believe it! Even though this was the cheapest budget CD player-cum-AM/FM radio you could get, it was more beautifully designed than almost any other small electrical item I've ever come across. It could barely have been any funkier if when you punched PLAY and the CD started to whirr and prattle una habitación individual por favor... etc a rainbow of mouse-sized miniature donkeys didn't irridesce from the speakers in a blaze of stardust and take to clopping round the CD-closed lid in hoof-waving formation.

I am having lots of fun with the Spanish language and have no inhibitions about yelling out things like "I want another hire car that doesn't smell of sick!" in those "listen and repeat" exercises ~ in the stately language of Cervantes and Lorca. I'm polishing up the most ridiculously posh Castillian accent I possibly can muster ~ lots of lispy Ss and Cs and B and V pronounced the same... por fabor, theñorita! Probably sounding like I've had too much BINO...

Before I fell asleep last night I had a go on the AM radio and was amazed to get a jabbering 20 to the dozen channel in German on medium-wave with elementary Spanish lessons bleeding in on the side... what kind of cosmic coincidence is that??!?

In the end I got fed up with interference in my ear all night and so set the Spanish dialogues on play. This is supposed to embed the language deep in the subconscious. What I can say is I dreamed of old donkeys pulling carts up narrow alleys of the old town...

Illustrated top and bottom you see the Andalucian clifftop village of Rhonda ~ yeah man I've been there. The clifftop is inland and so the soaring town walls go plummetting down to ordinary farmland... quite an amazing place... like a location from a dream...

Monday, June 22, 2009

I AM READING, or rather ploughing painstakingly slowly, through a mercifully short German novel I got from the public library called Evas ungewaschene Kinder by Sonja Ruf. In English the title means Eva's Unwashed Children but there isn't an English translation and I'm wading through it ever so slowly with a notebook and a dictionary, looking up an average of one word in ten (on a bad page) to one in twenty (on a good page). Everything I look up I carefully note down, complete with page number. And of course the translation. Here's my amateur translation of the blurb:

ONE DAY God came to visit and when Eva showed him her children, he felt full of hope. But some of the children she kept hidden because they hadn't yet washed and she was ashamed of showing God her unwashed children. God knew this and said, "What is hidden from me shall be hidden from humankind also." So ever since, these children have been invisible and live in cliffs and rocks, in hills and stones. Only when they wish it, can they be seen.

Here's what Google translate makes of it:God once came to visit, and Eva showed him their children, he was quite hopeful. But some of the children kept them hidden because they were not washed, and she was ashamed to God their unwashed children to show. What did God, and he said, "What I should remain bent, will also remain hidden from the people." Since these children for their siblings, the people, invisible and live in cliffs and rocks in the hills and rocks. Only if they wish, they can be seen.

I don't get the phrase, "ihre Kinder, die er recht hoffnungsvoll fand" and had to follow Google's idea because translated literally that would say, "her children, who he found full of hope" which doesn't really make sense. Can of you Deutsch-ssprechender readers enlighten me here please?

The German language is closely related to English. In fact, 2000 years ago, so I read, there was only one Teutonic language named proto-Germanic. But this doesn't make German anywhere nearly as easy to learn as you might expect. The grammar is very complicated (far more so than English's. E.g. adjectives don't take inflexional endings in English...). It has fewer idiomatic expressions than English and far far fewer than French, which is strewn with them. Perhaps its biggest Verwirrungspunk or confusion point, as you might say, is its vast number of words that are so very similar to one another and yet widely divergent in meaning. E.g. Käfer means "beetle" but a Käfig is a cage. Fahren means "to drive", vor means before: but a Vorfahr is an ancestor! But vorfahren means to drive ahead and a Vorfahrt is a right of way! There are gerzillions of seperable verbs, even more than our "phrasal verbs" in English (e.g. to pick up: aufheben) and those can portray confusing shades of meaning. Plus you have to remember to look for the separated bit (e.g. the auf)before you search for it in a dictionary, else you'll get totally lost.

On the plus side, many German words echo English ones and have a lovely onomatopoeic quality, e.g. schmutzig = "dirty", die Verschmutzung is pollution. Others, like Geduld/geduldig (patience/patient) just sound to me like they mean what they do even though they're nothing like any word in English ~ and that I can't explain.

When I was little I thought German was incredibly funky for its pageoverspilling portmanteau nouns e.g. Unterbewusstseinstrauma = subconscious trauma, mysteriously dotted vowels and that weird blobberous ß-thing you find splurged in the middle of the linguistic entertainment.

Though most English people call it an "umlaut" the two-dotted vowelly thing, as it appears in English is usually actually a diaeresis ~ a vowel-separator in words like "naïve". The German umlaut marks a change of vowel that hit the langauge in a famous late-medieaval sound shift. It only ever appears over the letters A, O and U. Ä is pronounced exactly the same as E; Ö and Ü are oo-ey sounds English-speakers must work at to get right.

English, incidentally, underwent a comparable vowel-shift a couple of hundred years later; it was then that the so-called "magic E" appeared in English spelling, so "bake", which had been pronounced something like "bakkeh" became pronounced as it is today.

The blobberous ß-thing is called "ess-tset" ("SZ") after the appearance of a ligatured long S and Z in blackletter type, though it actually represents a double S. It used to appear in many words, but a still-unpopular 1996 Official Spelling Treaty signed by the German, Austrian and Swiss governments abolished this, the German language's funkiest feature from more than half of them, rendering the language vandalized and forever dullened. My very favourite word, "bloß" which means "naked" or "nearly" (such a German combination!) is now boringly rendered "bloss". The only gains in funkiness were the addition of treble consonants in compound nouns such as Balletttanzer, but that hardly makes up for the lost blobberiness. The disblobberation was challenged in a German court of law, which ruled that no government could tell anybody how to spell, except in school ~ though government departments were allowed to specify their own styles of spelling for official documents.

Anyway my German is still so retarted it's taken me ten hours over three days to muddle through eighteen pages of Eva's Unwashed Children. I shall let you know when I finish!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

THEY LOOK just like a deranged tabby, but these bigger and far fiercer wildcats still live in the wilds of Scotland:

They never eat Whiskas Complete and survive solely on self-caught small mammals and birds. Look at those killer eyes:

In Britain they survive only in Scotland, but they're also native to much of Europe, into Asia and even Africa. They avoid approaching human habitation and have an average territory of about 3 square km or 2 square miles. See how much bigger they are than an ordinary house cat (though I suspect this photo actually shows 2):

Think of a ferral cat with attitude multiplied by 1000 and you'll see why the kittens are totally untameable. Picking one up is said to be like attempting to cuddle a bagful of claws and needle-sharp hissing teeth!

Friday, June 19, 2009

... RICH IN INFORMATION, that is. For today I joined the library! And because this is a new borough, where I don't owe massive fines from ten years ago, the application went straight through! I wandered about like a lottery winner in a department store thinking: Any of these books could be mine!

Little things little minds ~ yes.

Also I get free internet time ~ wahey!!

VIDEOS OF THE DAY ~ UK ANTIBINGEDRINKING CAMPAIGN"YOU WOULDN'T START OUT A NIGHT THIS WAY SO WHY END IT LIKE THIS..?"

Thursday, June 18, 2009

OK RATHER than bang in another post about how tired I feel I decided to go with an idea I had from (actually quite a depressing) TV prog last night entitled Spain: Paradise Lost. Now what you must understand about Spain, if you're not British or North European is that it's always been the short-haul sun-seeking destination of choice for Brits, Germans, Beneluxians and Scandinavians (with Greece a close second). From an American viewpoint you might say it's our Mexico. In recent years, the coasts have been deluged by mostly British but also a lot of German ex-pats wanting to start a new life. For this reason the Spanish Costas are sometimes called the California of Europe.

I've been to the Costa del Sol and it was pretty mental. People pack up and just go, get jobs in bars or restaurants or set up places of their own ~ most never learn a word of the local language.

Buying property in Spain is fraught with dangers ~ and this was the topic of last night's docu. Land laws are VERY different out there ~ and not having a clue about the language you're basically at the mercy of fate unless you're very careful.

Then I realized that because I speak German as well as English I'd actually be in quite a strong position to deal with a great number of these ex-pats, if I chose to go. I've always wanted to speak Spanish anyway (just never had a strong enough excuse to learn). If I DID get good Spanish ~ wow! I could start up a sunny new life. And act as an interpreter for folks taking sewerage-spouting rivers of diarrhoea running down the embankment like volcanic lava whenever it rains never finished la urbanización property developers to court!

An urbanización is a new development, usually of holiday apartments with bars areas, restaurant, swimming pools etc for lobster-red Northern European tourists to splurge life savings on...

... the problem being that the credit crunch has left many such places that were bought and paid for off-plan utterly unfinished. Or even worse the towering Euro and cowering pound credit-crunch interest-rates type situation has left many in negative equity and faced with losing everything.

Well it's only an idea. But as the saying goes, where there's trouble there's dosh to be made. So maybe I shall end up in the environs of Malaga rather than Vienna-Berlin...

The local fresh sardines are really nice. So long they flop each side off the plate. And local lemons to squeeze all over them. Not like the tinned variety at all...

... that's if I can stop myself sleeping 14 hours a day first!! I did 9 hours straight last night and woke up unhappy to be disturbed. Got back early afternoon and did another 3 or 4 ~ that's 12 or 13 already and the day is yet young.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

IT'S NOT THAT I've been running along hot desert roads ~ but I'm still utterly exhausted and sleeping hours at night AND during the day. I hate having to rouse myself for anything.

Sorry I have not yet replied to yesterday's comments. My mind is a bit scattered.

You know I still have not been to that diagnostic psych appointment. I had the "every few months how are you doing you sad druggie" check-up but my worker was there and that inhibited ANY conversation off the doctor's script. I just wanted to get out of there as quick as possible.

A week or two ago I got a letter advising me an appointment had been booked for me the day BEFORE the letter came. This was the dreaded appointment. I didn't bother rebooking as at the time I thought I felt fine ~ fine enough to reinterpret my entire past as the results of someone not willing to try hard enough.

But now I'm wading through honey (or worse) again and what goes around comes around again and again and again. I'm OK though I'm not going to hang myself I just feel sick, tired and depressed. And I've got to go because the evil cybercaff's about to time me out for dawdling ...

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

AWW! WHAT can I talk about? My head is done in having posted about "depression" ~ just thinking about it makes it worse. I know it's for real because as well as feeling peed off all the time I've been sleeping ridiculously long amounts of time.

It's not all down and doom though. The "invigilator" or whatever he calls himself ~ the guy in charge of yesterday's group ~ said I made a most profound statement when I piped up my Former Philosophy of Life (before I got sucked into junkiehood) ~ this was that you cannot change everything in life, can't necessarily avoid it, whatever you do, or defeat it. What you can change is your attitude to things ~ and THAT makes a massive difference.

If I cannot think my way out of these pits, surely I should be able to ACT my way out of them (that is by actions not pretence). Putting drugs well and truly behind me would be a good start. But that's a massive one. So you see I'm shot in the foot before I start because my Task To Do is far too huge.

I think that's why NA say "just for today" ~ ie live your life a day at a time. Sometimes the best way of not getting scared is just not to look down. Sometimes NOT seeing the bigger picture may actually help. Then perhaps afterwards we can marvel at the feats and accomplishments we might achieve.

MILES AWAYI heard this playing over Morrisons' PA and thought "that sounds like Madonna, but it's good"...

Monday, June 15, 2009

I WENT TO MY COMPULSORY DRUGS MEETING (if I don't go I get it in the neck off my Hitleresque drugs "worker") and despite the usual happening (a small collection of folks not nearly as long or as sorely addicted to drugs as me ~ even talk of needles leaves them out cold as they tend to cracksmokers and not junkies and so, in this "therapeutic" setting I must constantly check myself for what I say ~ very healthy) I decided to put out (for once again) exactly where I was coming from and how off I felt this past week and how it's called "depression" and comes in waves and comes back back back and predated my drug problem by over 15 years and how the Mental Health Operative seemed to think certain of my experiences denoted "bipolar" disorder rather than straight depression (though I really, in personal actuality, see depression as personal weakness and my more extreme experiences as evidence of spiritual warfare against me. Psychiatry is a religion just like Roman Catholicism with its own sacraments and "holy" grail. And personally I do not believe in it.)

I don't feel too bad when I keep moving. But once I stop, the blankness and meaningless of nonexistence hits me hard to handle...

So now they're on to re-book my missed psychiatric "picking over my open-hinged sinister worm-a-wriggling-strewn brainbox with psychological chopsticks and soy sauce" session that I only heard about the day AFTER it was booked for me.

Like most religions and their pantheons and philosophies, the great gods of Psychiatry are after me to confirm and prove I'm an irredeemable nutter or (as experienced more normally these days) to devalue my current suffering and put it all down to drugs. Even though it all began more than fifteen years before I ever was into heroin. And ten years before I ever smoked a spliff or dropped acid.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

THESE TUBBY critters were introduced to Britain by the Romans who liked to EAT them ~ yuck! ~ (hence the name of one species: "edible dormouse" (the other is "fat dormouse")). They look more like hamsters than any other British rodent:

Despite their tubby frames, they make quite agile climbers in the undergrowth:

They keep tubby and fat by nibbling as many wild seeds and berries as they can find:

They are called dormice because they sleep deeply and hibernate all winter long. And of course the babies are cute:

I WANT OFF METHADONE AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!

METHADONE ~ A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH

Heroin Shortage: News

If you are looking for the British Heroin Drought post, click here; the latest word is in the comments.

Christiane F

"Wir, Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo" by "Christiane F", memoir of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute, was a massive bestseller in Europe and is now a set text in German schools.
Bahnhoff Zoo was, until recently, Berlin's central railway station. A kind of equivalent (in more ways than one) to London's King's Cross...
Of course my local library doesn't have it. So I'm going to have to order it through a bookshop and plough through the text in German. I asked my druggieworker Maple Syrup, who is Italiana how she learned English and she said reading books is the best way.CHRISTIANE F:
TRAILER
You can watch the entire 120-min movie in 12 parts at my Random blog. Every section EXCEPT part one is subtitled in English (sorry: but if you skip past you still get the gist) ~ to watch it all click HERE.

To See Gledwood's Entire Blog...

DID you find my blog via a Google or other search? Are you stuck on a post dated some time ago? Do you want to read Gledwood Volume 2 right from "the top" ~ ie from today?If so click here and you'll get to the most recent post immediately!

Drugs Videos

Most of these come from my Random blog, which is an electronic scrapbook of stuff I thought I might like to view at some time or other. For those who want to view stuff on drugs I've collected the very best links here. Unless otherwise stated these are full-length features, usually an hour or more.

If you have a slow connexion and are unused to viewing multiscreen films on Youtube here's what to do: click the first one and play on mute, stopping and starting as it does. Then, when it's done, click on Repeat Play and you get the full entertainment without interruption. While you watch screen one, do the same to screens 2, 3 and so on. So as each bit finishes, the next part's ready and waiting.

Classic miniseries whose title became a catchphrase for the misery of life in East Asian prison. Nicole Kidman plays a privileged middle-class girl set up to mule heroin through Thai customs with the inevitable consequences. This is so long it had to be posted in two parts. "Bangkok Hilton 1" (first 2 hours or so); "Bangkok Hilton 2" (last couple of hours).

Short film: from tapwater-clear H4 in the USA to murky black Afghan brown in Norway: "Heroin Addicts Speak"

Before his untimely death this guy kept a video diary. Here's the hour-long highlights as broadcast on BBC TV: "Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict". Thanks to Noah for the original link.

Some of the most entertaining scenes from Britain's top soap (as much for the poor research as anything else). Not even Phil Mitchell would go from nought to multi-hundred pound binges this fast: "Phil Mitchell on Crack" (just over 5 minutes).

Scientist lady shows us how to cook up gear: "How Much Citric?" Lucky cow: her brown is 70% purity! Oddly we never see her actually do her hit... maybe she got camera shy...

And lastly:

German documentary following a life from teenage addiction to untimely death before the age of 30. The decline in this girl's appearance is truly shocking. "Süchtig: Protokoll einer Hilflosigkeit". Sorry no subtitles; this is here for anyone learning German who's after practice material a little more gripping than Lindenstraße!

Nosey Quiz! Have you ever heard voices when you weren't high on drugs?

DJ Kitty on the WHEELS OF STEEL!!

Orange Theme

By Cygnus X: Vitamin C mix

Let's Goa Way....

Laughing Buddha: Astral Traveller; fantastic psychedelic trance:~~~

Exalted

One AMAZING tune:~

Meow

Here's the 4-methylmethcathinone molecule. This is the "cocaine plus ecstasy"-style "legal high" I took that time and didn't even know what it was... After a brief but intense craze for meow, it was eventually banned in the UK in April 2010

Manic Episode

If you wanna see what manic looks like, watch this. If this is the mood she stayed in all day she'd be moderately manic (severely manic is literally all over the place verging into complete incoherence)... I have been known to yell the same stuff over and over, which is why I like this:

Adagio for Strings

DJ Seduction: Starlight August 1992

I love this style of music and WHY do kidz today call it OLD SCHOOL? MAKE ME FEEL ANCIENT WHY DONCHA! I really like that ting-ting-tong tune that comes into it about 3 mins in "release the spirit" yeah....! Respect goin' out LizzyD Yeah ;-)

Angelina Joelie: Crazy Chic

Girl Interrupted: best scenes

Mozart's Requiem Tranced Up

I like danced-up tunes now that I'm "OLD". Like this one... The actual name of the tune is "lacrimosa" which means sad. Which is weird it actually sounds uplifting. but there ya go:~~~~~~~~

Sushi!

THIS is classic slice-of-life video; filmed from a sushibar conveyor belt in Japan. You don't need sound for this one (unless you speak Japanese...)

Never Mind The Balearics...

LOST WEEKENDS... Lost weeks... Lost lives...
THE SPANISH ISLE of Ibiza is the "spiritual home" of much British dance music...

Eva Cassidy: Autumn Leaves

I wonder if Autumn is as miserable your end as it is here..? This song wonderfully reinterpreted by Eva Cassidy (I think) brought tears to my eyes when I first heard it. See what you think ...

Christiane F

Christiane F
("Wir Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo")
Berlin has long been a centre of "alternative" living, attracting the artistic and dejected. And of course heroin rushes into such a void:
You can see the film in its entirety by clicking HERE.

These are my 3 roborovski hamsters!

(And now there is one...) Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... Itchy, the scruffy, dopey (and tamest one) died a few weeks ago. I was very ****** off (no swearing on this blog (or I'd be effing and blinding all the time...)). Spherical and Bashful were the remaining "Trotters" aka Hamsta MCs, Carrot Nose and Trotter Donkey ... until Trotterdonkey died and now poor Spherical Carrot Nose remains alone ...

What name should I give to my fictional slavering English mastiff hellhound..??

Name the Uncooth Doggie...

NOW I'M PUTTING UP A NEW POLL...My forthcoming fiction shall feature a giant, ill-tempered slavering hellhound of an English Mastiff who spends her time savaging pram wheels, dolls, etc; pulling soft toys apart... growling at houseguests, baying at the light fittings etc etc. She has a total personality change, however, when she gets "raped" down the park by a local rottweiler... leading to a howling, baying, snaggle-toothed litter of puppies!Anyway, which of these three names do you think fits best?(In alphabetical order)GwendolinaPansyTinkerbelle???Vote now ...!!

London Time

Trisch & Jen on the phone

Real life spooky phone call. Trisch Li is speaking to her friend Jen, who has a stalker sneaking round the side of her house. I Love the film exposure. I love the funky background. And I love Trisch. She had bipolar. She died. She left some amazing stuff behind ...You can see Trisch manic here.

Moby: Go

Anyone who was a Twin Peaks fan will know this tune: the in-sequence floaty tune played in-episode (not the theme tune) that made that tellyprog so dreamy.
This tune is something else:~~~~~~~

Future Sound of London: Papua New Guinea

THIS tune is transcendently beautiful.
Thank you to Lizzy who reminded me:~~~~~~~

The Orb: Little Fluffy Clouds (Danny Tengalia)

Archetypal triphead/herb-tokers' tune ...

Urban Shakedown: Some Justice

One of my all time favourite "hardcore" rave tunes. The "woman" singing "we live as one family" is actually a man speeded up. The primal line "Now eeeee-yeah-oh-eeeee-yeah we live as one family," sounded to me like the sun rising at psychedelic dawn. For a long time there was forever a part of me left from this 1991-1992 era, still out there, tripping in a certain corn-on-the-cob field at dawn...

Praga Khan: Injected with a Poison

Sums up what my attitude used to be and is once again to gear. That because, "There's a rainbow inside your mind ... Injected with a poison.... we don't need that any more."

Scott McKenzie: San Francisco

I really used to believe all this crap with all my heart. Peace and love and chemical dreams. If you've ever tripped out high upon higher and sublime upon sublime there is no way of bringing the beauty of the experience back with you... I once had a friend down who brought some cocaine. I did some lines and was soon stuck to the ceiling. I had tickets for a rave in south London. He was too wasted to go. So I had to negotiate an hour and a half nightbus ride all the way down. By Trafalgar Square I was eeing out on 2 pills as well and my eyes such massive discs I couldn't read the bus time tables and had to tell passers-by I'd "forgotten my reading glasses" (how embarrassing)... then I arrived around 3pm. DUR! Not pm (wasn't THAT late 3AM): though these pills didn't wear off till well after 11am which made them superstrong... anyhow... Security let me straight in I'd obviously taken all my drugs (indeed I had: felt like I was flying by this point)... first person I encountered was a middle-aged woman in a ball gown swaying back and forth in the foyer (Brixton Academy: a venue for 5000) I told her: "you are so cool". We subsequently made friends. Watching this video and seeing how stuck in the neverending moment of bliss some "flower kids" are I remember this lady having to tell me: "there's the party. Then the party's over. You have to accept that." But I never could. I wanted happiness to last for ever...
SCOTT MACKENZIE HAS GONE (copyright reasons)
HERE'S JOE BELTRAM 1990 ENERGY FLASH

About Me

38 year-old guy, 6 blogs (the main one is gledwood vol 2 so go there for new postings: blogs are linked via my sidebars), I also have 3 video blogs. One mainly music vids, the other random "novelty" clips from Youtube/etc. The third is my Fabulous Celebrity Blog for fans of trash culture. Unfortunately addicted to drugs - yes it was my own fault but what can I do about it now? Addicted means trapped & can't stop. That's how addicted I am. But that's not ALL I blog about. Apart from drugs I love drink. Apart from drink I'm into little furry animals like Pingpong, my Chinese hamster, and my 3 roborovski hamsters: Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... and ... er, food. Lately there has been a drought of the substance that enslaved me for so long. Will I clean up? Only time will tell...